Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)-- $1,837,210 in bribesYou may recall that about a month ago we were looking at the exertions ole Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)-- one of the less discreet bribe-takers on the House Financial Services Committee-- was making on behalf of his Wall Street financiers. He has nothing to worry about. His deep red, central Missouri district, stretching west from the St. Louis exurbs beyond Jefferson City, gave Obama a mere 36% of the vote in 2012 and he's won his reelection bids with around two-thirds of the vote. He beat back two coo-coo bird primary opponents in 2014 with 80% of the vote.He used to be the president of the bank his family owns, the Bank of St. Elizabeth and he also owns the Luetkemeyer Insurance Agency. He could barely wait to get onto the House Financial Services Committee to work his magic (against consumers, obviously). Since getting into Congress in 2008, ole Blaine has been one of the biggest recipients of Finance Sector legalistic bribes-- $397,552 this cycle (nope; that what he had taken in when I investigated him a month ago; now that he passed H.R. 766 for them, he's up to $532,277 for the cycle, so far) and a cool $1,837,210 since being elected to the House, which ain't bad for someone who has no electoral challenges to worry about.So, why bring up Luetkemeyer, since there's obviously nothing anyone can do about him? The Democrats aren't running anyone against him and he has no primary, just a symbolic challenge from a grad student on the Libertarian Party, Dan Hogan. Well... here's why: Wednesday morning Luetkemeyer spoke at an American Bankers Association meeting and told them that "they need to 'find a way to neuter' Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whom he described as 'the Darth Vader of the financial services world.' There isn't much Luetkemeyer can do to "neuter" Elizabeth Warren other than whining about her to banksters who already hate her. But the banksters have someone else working on that project for them: their very own Chuck Schumer.I hope you recall Schumer's plan to "balance out" (a more polite term) Senator Warren. We've gone over it several times in the past and Wall Street's overt threat to Schumer's power/funding was very public and ran in the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Big Wall Street banks are so upset with U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren's call for them to be broken up that some have discussed withholding campaign donations to Senate Democrats in symbolic protest, sources familiar with the discussions said.Representatives from Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, have met to discuss ways to urge Democrats, including Warren and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, to soften their party's tone toward Wall Street, sources familiar with the discussions said this week.Bank officials said the idea of withholding donations was not discussed at a meeting of the four banks in Washington but it has been raised in one-on-one conversations between representatives of some of them. However, there was no agreement on coordinating any action, and each bank is making its own decision, they said.
Their demands were simple: they wanted their own man to replace Harry Reid as head of the Senate Dems. Reid was found in his home beaten to a pulp, nearly dead and immediately announced he was resigning and that Chuck Schumer would take over, even though Schumer wasn't in-line for the job and even though there had been no vote. And the banksters wanted pro-Wall Street Democrats (i.e.- Schumercrats) as the party's nominees in 2016, senators who would "balance" the anti-Wall Street faction. Schumer swore to deliver Patrick Murphy-- the banksters' first choice, to whom they have given more funding than any non-incumbent running this cycle ($872,350 so far). The other Wall Street-friendly crooked nominees approved by Wall Street: Chris Van Hollen (MD), Ted Stickland (OH), Tammy Duckworth (IL), Catherine Cortez Masto (NV) and Katie McGinty (PA). Here are the campaign contributions from the Finance Sector to their all-time favorite Members of Congress:Ever wonder why the government stinks? We mentioned when covering the vote of Luetkemeyer's latest anti-consumer legislation that Wall Street-financed Patrick Murphy was an original co-sponsor of the bill but, now that he's in a primary election, was too scared to vote for it and hid in the toilet when the roll was called. While Murphy was hiding in the bathroom trembling in fear, 10 of the worst Wall Street shills among House Democrats DID cross the aisle and vote with the Republicans on Luetkemeyer's legislation:
Brad Ashford (Blue Dog-NE)- no primarySanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)- no primaryTony Cardenas (CA)- last minute primary, just announced this weekJim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)- no primaryHenry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- no primaryAlcee Hastings (FL)- no primaryCollin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- no primaryDavid Scott (Blue Dog-GA)- no primary/no Nov. challengerKyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- no primary
Primaries are important and Republicans seem to understand that better than Democrats do. Tuesday night in every congressional race where a progressive confronted a Wall Street Democrat supported by the bankster-backing trio of Schumer, Wasserman Schultz and Steve Israel, the progressive lost-- PG Sittenfeld in Ohio and both Mike Noland and Nancy Rotering in Illinois. All were outspent by their Wall Street-backed opponents. Campaign spending as of Feb. 24
• Sittenfeld- $1,064,599, Strickland- $2,201,199• Noland- $199,256, Krishnamoorthi- $645,745• Rotering- $988,155, Schneider- $1,482,136
So what are we going to do about it? I'd say that the especially crucial primaries coming up are Alan Grayson's and Donna Edwards' for Senate seats in Florida and Maryland and for House seats in Florida (for Tim Canova against Wasserman Schultz), Iowa (Pat Murphy against Monica Vernon), Maryland (for Jamie Raskin and for Joseline Pena-Melnyk), New York (for Eric Kingson), in Oregon (for Dave McTeague against head Blue Dog Kurt Schrader), New Jersey (for Alex Law against George Norcross' contemptible brother Donald), Missouri (for Maria Chappelle-Nadal) and the 3 reformers in California-- Lou Vince, Nanette Barragan and Bao Nguyen. Conveniently, you can find an ActBlue page with all of them by tapping the Blue America just thermometer below-- rapidly closing in on our $350,000 page goal: